First Death in Nova Scotia

The poem is a lyric: It is relatively short and centers on the speaker’s personal experience, their memory of Arthur’s death. The poem links to Bishop’s biography and qualifies as a confessional poem. Though Bishop isn’t confessing a secret, she is confiding about a personal memory. The poem works as a riddle, as the speaker’s unfamiliarity with death produces an eerie atmosphere that makes it difficult to decipher. Defamiliarization makes the poem a puzzle, and the reader must piece it together.

While the poem is confessional, Bishop didn’t identify as a confessional poet, and the reader doesn’t need to link the speaker to the poet to understand the poem. Based on a close reading of the poem, the speaker has neither a name nor a gender. Based on the title, the speaker’s memory occurs in Nova Scotia, where, presumably, their late cousin lived with his father, Uncle Arthur. The speaker also has a mother who “laid out Arthur” (Line 2) and has a commanding role in the funeral—choosing where to display Arthur. Aside from technical details, the speaker remains mysterious. They don’t share their intangible feelings about Arthur. Instead, they act as a photographer, sharing images of what they see and letting the